That's kind of funny. Personally, I refuse to play D&D. I hate the system, particularly the armor system they use. Give me a good skill-based game system with an armor system that works the way real armor does, none of this "armor class which prevents you from getting hit" garbage. Armor does not stop you from getting hit. IT absorbs damage after you've been hit!!!!!!. That's why I find R.Talsorian's systems (both Interlock and FUZION, to be vastly superior to D20 and its predecessors.
Heh... the armor system is one of the many other reasons I mentioned (and probably many others I did not), that I do not really care for D&D's system my self. So I compleatly agree with you on it. As to why I would be somewhat ok with playing D&D is not because I find the system acceptable in any way... but rather that I would like to play pnp rpg's with my friends no matter what they decided to play. One outweights the other... but only in extream cases of it really.
Yes, it might seems odd at first, but is all a matter of abstraction. It's not just that you didn't get hit, it's that your armor absorbed the blow or you dodge it in the last second. In what I agree is that D&D never had a good way to manage skills IMO.
It was not that I did not understand how it works that I do not like it. I compleatly understand the thought behind the AC system, how it works, and how the abstraction of it is. I just do not agree with the philosophy behind using it. I do not like the idea that everythign get's clumped into one large number which I then roll against. After you roll you don't know why you failed or succeeded, and you would have to make that up your self... it's just to... insipid, lackluster, undescriptive, and quite frankly... unbelivebly boring.
Most of the system that I like and play handles it by first both sides rolling an initiative roll. The winner is the attacker, and the other one is the defender. Then in the first turn both combatants decide, hidenly, what they are going to do. The attacker has, amongst his advantages, the advantage of that what ever happends in the turn, his first thing will happend befor his opponents first thing. So if both choice to attack, the Attackers attack will hit befor the defenders attack hits... which means that if the attacker hits and does enough damage, then the defenders attack would never happend. So, usually the defender would choice to take a defensive action like block with a shield, or parry with a weapon, or dodge.
Let's say the attacker choice to attack with his sword, and the defender choice to block with his shield. Both rolls the dice/dices versus the relevant skill (so sword and shield). Numerous things can happend here. If both are successful: then the defender managed to block the attack on his shield, but his shield might get damaged if the attacker does enough damage to it. If only the defender succeeded: then the attacker basicly just missed and nothing else happends. If only the attacker succeeded: then the defender failed to block, as the attacker managed to hit him as well. There are other versions to, where if both sides choice to do multiple attacks/defensive manouvers, and then of course certain games might have other things you can also do to throw a wrench into the machinery. It is basicly a highly tactical game... you have to outsmart the opponent, no matter if your the attacker or the defender.
One game we play for example is advance to such a point where most weapons can do 3 types of damages (slashing, crushing, and piercing), you can also use a skill called "undvika" basically "dodge"... this skill, dodge, can be done in several different ways, just a general dodge (which gives no +'s, but neither any -), duck, jump, step back, or step to the side. Now, let's say you have a two handed sword... and you keep swinging the sword to try and do slashing damage... the best thing to dodge this with is usually to "step back" (alternatiely duck or jump if the opponent attacks high or low), doing the right kind of dodge against the right kind of attack makes it easier to succeed with the dodge. So, me with my two-handed sword, which does most damage with slashing damage, I did a regular attack in the first turn, and the same in the second turn, and both times the opponent "stepped back" with his dodge, and both times due to it they got a bonus to their dodge, and as a result escaped any kind of harm both times... so for the 3rd turn I hope that the opponent does the same again, so I decide to do a thrusting attack instead, which causes piercing damage which my 2-handed sword does not do near as much damage with as it does with slashing... and it turns out the opponent once again tried to dodge by stepping back... but due to that I instead did a thrusting attack, stepping back is suddenly the worst thing he could do, because it makes it harder for him to avoid my attack, and voilá, he failed his dodge and get's hit by my 2h sword... and due to the nature of this game I happend to roll unusually high amounts of damage and ran my sword through his heart and out the back of him, where he dies convulsing on my sword, at which point I nonchalantly kicks him of my sword and turn my attention to the remaining fight.
And this is not even taking into account that either or neither of them have armor on. When you add armor then suddenly the tactics of the fight changes again. Because now, as for example a defender, you have maybe the option to not block/parry/dodge at all, and instead hope that your armor is enough to reduce the damage you might get enough, from getting hit, so you do not lose your action in the turn, and instead launch a counter attack which the attacker did not take into account at all. At which point the attacker has to decide if they want to take a reactionary defensive move (and lose their turn, and possibly becoming the defender in the next round as well), the same choice of "will my armor hold up here... or should I not risk it and block/parry/dodge it instead... he does have a 2h axe though..."
And the way armor works in the game I play is by reducing the incoming damage from each individual attack that hits you. So in the simpler games: soft leather will reduce 2 points of damage, a chainmail will reduce it with 5, and heavy plate armor will reduce it with 10. Where as in the advanced system, that I play: soft leather will protect 3 vs slashing, 3 vs crushing, and 2 vs piercing... chainmail will protect 12 vs slashing, 4 vs crushing, and 8 vs piercing... and heavy plate armor will protect 15 vs slashing, 12 vs crushing, and 15 vs piercing. Some of these numbers might sound high for the advanced one game... but at the same time the potential damage for any given attack you do, with any given weapon (or unarmoured at the same time) is technicly infinite... since the game revolves around D6's, and "infinite" D6's at that, where if you roll a 6 on any of the dices then you pick it/them up and add an equal number of new D6's and then roll all of them, and you keep doing that until there are no more 6's on the table, at which point you sum it all up. I think the highest roll I have eved done was one where I rolled 3D6's, which in the end rolled a total of somehting like 60-70+ I think it was. My GM had a friend in the military who managed to roll over 300, where the original roll was just 1D6. XD
